Precision livestock farming (PLF) is a set of electronic tools and methods for managing livestock. It involves automated monitoring of animals to improve their production/reproduction, health, welfare, and impact on the environment. PLF tracks large animals, such as cows, "per animal"; however, it tracks smaller animals, such as poultry, "per flock", wherein the whole flock in a house is treated as one animal. Tracking "per flock" is widely used in broilers. PLF technologies include cameras, microphones, and other sensors for tracking livestock, as well as accompanying computer software. The data recorded can be either quantitative or qualitative, and/or address sustainability. Goals PLF involves the monitoring of animals, or the use of objective measurements on the animals, using signal analysis algorithms and statistical analysis. These techniques are applied in part with the goal of regaining an advantage of older, smaller-scale farming, namely detailed knowledge of individual animals. Before large farms became the norm, most farmers had an intimate knowledge of their livestock. Moreover, a farmer could typically trace an animal's pedigree and retain other important characteristics. Each animal was approached as an individual. In the past three decades, farms have multiplied in scale, with highly automated processes for feeding and other tasks. Consequently, farmers are forced to work with many more animals to make their living out of livestock farming and work with average values per group. Variety has become an impediment to increasing economies of scale. Using information technology, farmers can record the attributes of each animal, such as pedigree, age, reproduction, growth, health, feed conversion, killing out percentage (carcass weight as a percentage of its live weight) and meat quality. Animal welfare, infection, aggression, weight, feed and water intake are variables that today can be monitored by PLF. Culling can be done on the basis of reproduction values, in addition to killing out percentage, meat quality, and health. The result of incorporating this technology into large-scale farming is a potentially significantly higher reproduction outcome, with each newborn also potentially contributing to a higher meat value. In addition to these economic goals, precision livestock farming supports societal goals: food of high quality and general safety, animal farming that is efficient but also sustainable, animal health and well-being, and a small ecological footprint of livestock production. Economic livestock farming Due to academic studies, the requirements of an animal are well known for each phase of its life and individual physical demands.